LC \o% \ 

Addresses on 

Commercial and Technical 

Education 



Frank A. Vanderlip 



Addresses on 

Commercial and Technical 

Education 



Frank A. Vanderlip 



New York 
1905 






(■b 



Gift 
Author 
(Person) 

.S Js'06 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER 
EDUCATION 



Founder's Day Address 



Delivered at Girard College, Philadelphia 
May 20, 1905 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 



It has been well said that when Stephen Girard con- 
ceived this notable institution, the benefaction was more 
than a philanthropy, — it was a precedent. He was the 
first man of great wealth to devote a vast fortune to an 
educational idea. We cannot measure the influence that 
act had. The example may have been of as great good 
in its effect upon the minds of other men of wealth, as 
has been the value of the great benefaction itself. Cer- 
tain it is that the precedent then made was the begin- 
ning of a long and ever-increasing list of educational 
gifts. That list has come to be of such proportions that 
to-day the giving of a million dollars to an institution of 
learning excites little more than the passing comment of 
the hour. 

In the gift of Stephen Girard, there was a special signi- 
ficance. It was not a gift of money alone ; there was added 
to the money wise judgment, a noble motive and a care- 
fully considered plan. Girard gave his brain, the ripe 
wisdom of his experience, and the broad and helpful 
charity which years of struggle and sorrow and loneli- 
ness had left in his heart. With his money, he also gave 
himself. 

In the long line of educational benefactors who have 
come after him, can there be found one who has done 
more? Is there one who has more completely vivified 
his gift with his own thought, his own personality ? It is 
to the value of that particular phase of Girard's giving, 
the value of the example which he set in the giving of his 
own ripe judgment, as well as of his money, that I would 
especially direct your attention. 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 

Learned men are to-day almost as far from agreement 
as to what constitutes the best education, as they were 
when Aristotle first protested against current beliefs on 
the subject. All the centuries of debate and of experi- 
ment from the days of the Greek philosophers to the latest 
meeting of our own educators, have resulted in progress, 
but certainly not in agreement as to what is education 
and as to just how it should best be acquired. Probably 
the nature of the problem is such that a definite solution 
never can be reached. We can hardly expect an answer 
which will be accepted by all learned men. I am in- 
clined to believe that one reason why we have never ap- 
proached nearer to agreement, however, is because the so- 
lution of the problem has been left too largely in the hands 
of professional educators. 

Even though men bear learned degrees and have shown 
rare ability in acquiring a special sort of knowledge pre- 
scribed by a particular system of education, it may not fol- 
low that those same learned men are the best judges of 
what should be the trend of that educational system. If 
they alone are left to shape the further development of 
that system, I believe its growth would be less likely in 
all respects to follow the best lines than would be the 
case if its development were in a measure shaped by men 
who have acquired another form of education and have 
scored success in other fields. The professional educator 
is quite as likely to become narrow and provincial as is 
any other specialist. The president of one of our great 
eastern universities told me a few days ago that he had 
been making an exhaustive examination of the history 
of his institution and he had discovered that every great 
progressive step which the university had taken in 150 
years, had been against the protest and the opposition of 
the faculty. The trustees from time to time brought for- 
ward new plans of organization and broader ideas re- 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 



garding the curriculum. The faculty had in every case 
voted adversely, and when the changes were made, they 
were made only by the trustees taking the responsibility 
upon themselves. Even Alexander Hamilton, with his 
consummate wisdom, once worked out a plan of reorgani- 
zation for the university, only to have it meet with the 
usual vote of emphatic protest from the faculty, but final 
adoption by the trustees. Now, in the light of years of 
experience, these changes are seen to have been wise 
in the main. The unavailing protests of the learned 
men who made up the institution's faculty are dis- 
covered to have sometimes been based on narrow 
grounds lacking the impersonal view and judgment that 
should have been brought to bear upon the questions. 

This is only one illustration of many that might be 
given of the tendency toward narrowness on the part of 
the specialist, of the wisdom there is in larger counsels 
and of the value to educational progress that may come 
with the judgment and experience of men of large affairs 
and wide interests. Schools are for the education of all 
sorts of men, and in directing their development, there is 
need of almost as many points of view and of as varied 
experiences as there are classes of men to be educated. 
It is easily possible for men engaged in the particular 
work of education to become narrow. Book covers con- 
tain much knowledge, but may also shut out from a too 
close student much wisdom, — much of that sort of wis- 
dom which is gained by experience in the world. And 
so, I believe that when the example was set to men of 
wealth, of giving with their money their thought, their 
experience, their judgment, that example was of great 
value. 

Keen foresight, a shrewd knowledge of humanity, a 
wise and well-seasoned judgment of the practical value 
of things, ordinarily go to make up the mental equipment 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 

of the man who has made a milHon dollars which he is 
ready to devote to some great public good. If the example 
which Girard set in any measure leads such men fully 
to use that same wisdom and judgment which enabled 
them to make the million dollars, in helpfully directing 
along right lines the manner of its spending, then the 
example is of value indeed. The worth of a man's bene- 
faction may be vastly increased if, to directing the in- 
fluences which the gift will set in motion, he will give 
anything like the thought which he gave first to the ac- 
quisition of the money. The gift which is vitalized by 
the sound judgment of the giver may become more val- 
uable because of its aim than because of its amount. 

There has been much generous giving without clear 
thinking. There has been much philanthropy the effect- 
iveness of which has been small because there was lack 
of wisdom in directing its use. That leads me then to one 
thought which I wish to present in connection with my 
subject, and that thought is in reference to the tend- 
ency toward waste. The keynote of economic life 
to-day may be said to be the prevention of waste. 
The pervading economic tendency of the day, the 
tendency toward combination and away from useless 
competition, is a tendency which has been set in 
motion as a protest against waste. It is, I believe, in 
its potentiality for the improvement of the condition 
of men among the foremost of all economic influences 
ever brought into being. 

Not a great deal of thought has been devoted to the 
idea of waste in education. We have a feeling that all 
education is good, and whether or not this or that par- 
ticular educational activity is of the greatest possible 
efficiency, we still think that it is at least of value and is 
worthy of encouragement. This loose commendation of 
all forms of education tends to blind eyes to an educa- 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 



tional waste, though they would with clearness see an 
economic waste. It is true too that the disadvantages of 
educational waste are not so clearly discernible as are the 
disadvantages of economic waste, though the results may 
be no less deplorable. 

Since the precedent of the great Girard benefaction was 
established there has followed a golden flood of gifts for 
educational purposes and in the main the giving has been 
without discrimination. It has been as if Education were 
a definite and complete conception and as if a benefaction 
laid at Education's shrine, no matter where that shrine 
might be erected or in whose keeping it might be, was a 
gift given with rare discrimination and with the certainty 
that it would be wisely devoted to the noblest uses. Un- 
fortunately that has not always been the case. Educa- 
tional donations are frequently, I may almost say usually 
made with a lack of perspective as to what would be 
best for the whole educational field. The giver or the re- 
cipient may be moved by an ambition to satisfy local or 
personal pride. Rarely have men made their gifts in such 
form as would be to the greatest advantage to the proper 
development of the whole system of higher education. 
They have not clearly seen how much the system was lack- 
ing in co-ordination of effort, how wasteful it was becom- 
ing in unnecessary duplication, how needlessly costly it 
was being made by useless and hurtful competition — not 
competition in the field of merit, but in the field of narrow 
personal or local ambition. 

There has been a lack of co-ordination in the field of 
higher education. We have failed to evolve a strong cen- 
tral purpose which would serve to give symmetry to edu- 
cational development. The lack of a central influence, 
an influence which would hold back growth here and en- 
courage it there, has cost much in wasted effort and in 
unsymmetrical growth and development. 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 

If the Stephen Girards of to-day, men of clear thinking, 
of high purpose, of wise judgment, would give the best 
that is in them of wisdom and advice to aid the educators 
in creating wisely such a central purpose, the gift which 
they would thus make would be of greater value than 
would be their gifts of millions. 

Just what they should advise I am, of course, neither 
prepared nor competent to say. I wish only to assert 
confidence in the great benefit to the whole movement of 
higher education which would come from the advice such 
men could give, would they but study the problem with the 
care with which they study the large affairs of business. 
There is, however, a hint for a plan of effective action, it 
seems to me, in the two vast benefactions which have been 
made by the great philanthropist of our present day. In 
the ten-million-dollar fund which created the Carnegie In- 
stitution there was the idea of a benefaction which should 
be devoted to the advancement of human knowledge 
wherever the opportunity could be found. It was not the 
purpose to build up an additional institution of higher 
learning, to duplicate the work and compete with the ef- 
forts of an already ample number of such institutions, but 
rather to lend aid wherever aid was most needed for the 
advancement of human knowledge. In a more recent 
benefaction a like vast sum has been given for the useful 
purpose of retiring faculty members who have passed their 
day of usefulness and who, in the interest of highest ef- 
ficiency, had best make way for others. The benefits of 
this latest foundation are intended to apply to the entire 
body of institutions of higher learning with certain obvi- 
ously appropriate exceptions. 

Is there not in these two benefactions a hint of what 
might be done in the way of a movement of great import- 
ance towards unifying and co-ordinating our whole system 
of higher education, a movement which would tend to de- 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 



crease a waste of expenditure and of effort? It hardly 
needs demonstration, I think, that there is such waste. 
There is a waste of educational endowments and of in- 
structors' efforts as well as of the meagre funds and 
invaluable time of the youths whose college years are be- 
ing made less fruitful than would be the case had we 
reached the point of highest possible efficiency in each edu- 
cational institution. 

I believe there might be created a great central fund, the 
object of which should be so to distribute the income as to 
give effective force to an impulse toward co-ordination of 
our whole system of higher education. If such a fund 
were in the hands of the wisest body of men that could be 
brought together for that purpose, it could be so used that 
it would stimulate the educational system to a symmetrical 
growth. It could be so administered that it would encour- 
age that growth which ought to be encouraged in the 
judgment of men who were looking at the whole field. It 
would avoid the mistake of helping institutions to under- 
take work that was not demanded and for which they were 
not fitted. It would give great encouragement to the 
small colleges, but it would be encouragement leading 
them to do the best possible work in their own particular 
field, and not stimulating them into attempts to become 
universities that undertook to accomplish impossible 
things. On the other hand, it would give encouragement 
to great universities to broaden and strengthen their ca- 
pacity to do true university work, and it would discourage 
the efforts of such of those institutions as may have for- 
gotten that numbers alone do not make great seats of 
learning. It would put emphasis on the error of those in- 
stitutions that have lowered their standards and admitted 
to their privileges a mass of illy-prepared youths, who, 
from every point of view, might have better spent some 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 

time at a smaller institution where individual needs could 
have been looked after more efficiently and effectively. 

I would provide for the administration of such a fund, a 
board of trustees that had large educational experience 
and outlook, and I would also have among those trustees 
men of broad experience in affairs of importance and in 
the practical matters which concern the average man. 
Such a fund so administered would put a mighty impress 
on the whole development of higher education. It might 
make an impress which would be out of all proportion in 
importance to the effect which the same fund would have 
had if, in the first instance, it had been divided among 
many institutions. 

I believe if some present day Girard will make the be- 
ginning with such a fund, giving with his benefaction his 
wisdom, his experience and his judgment, so that the fund 
really becomes an instrument such as I have described, he 
will have rendered a service, the value of which will be 
beyond measure ; he will have created an instrument 
which will check waste ; he will have helped men to 
see that the highest possible success for an institution 
of learning is to become a perfectly efficient unit in a 
perfectly co-ordinated scheme ; he will have made men 
understand that the unit which forms one part in such 
a system is as creditable as another, that the small 
college can be made to do as valuable work as the great 
university, providing each institution fulfills its special 
purpose in a symmetrical whole. 

Since the day when Stephen Girard drew the will which 
made this institution possible, there have come alterations 
in the scope and method of educational work which have 
been fundamental and far-reaching. The seventy-five 
years which have elapsed since that instrument was writ- 
ten have worked vast change and progress in every depart- 
ment of life, and in none, perhaps, more than in the field 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 

of education. The world's conception of a university has 
been revised within that period, the scope of the curric- 
uhim has been broadened so as to take in fields of knowl- 
edge that were not thought, by Stephen Girard's contem- 
poraries, susceptible of scientific classification. Those 
curriculums have now long contained subjects which then 
no one supposed would ever form a part of college training. 

We have gained, too, new and greatly improved concep- 
tions of how old subjects should be taught. In the enter- 
taining autobiography which that most useful citizen, 
Andrew D. White, has recently given to the world, an 
interesting picture is presented of the shortcomings of 
American universities at a period even a generation after 
Girard's death. The university world then was a world of 
dry text-book recitations, lacking the method and treat- 
ment that give subjects a living interest. There was not 
at that time in an American university a professor of his- 
tory, pure and simple. It was not until Mr. White had 
organized Cornell University, and at as late a day as 1870, 
that there was in any American university a course of 
lectures on American history. An American student, in 
order to secure instruction in the history of his country, 
had, before that time, to go to the lectures of Laboulaye at 
the College of France. 

It is within the period since Girard's death that an en- 
tire department of learning has been recognized and cre- 
ated — the department of higher technical education. At 
first the idea of that sort of education was scouted by the 
universities, while its value failed of appreciation at the 
hands of practical men. A man need not to have lived 
more than the allotted span to remember the scant regard 
in which higher technical education was held. Practical 
men pronounced it impractical ; learned men regarded its 
atmosphere, spirit and scope as something to put it quite 
outside of the recognized field of higher education. There 



13 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 

has been a long step from the attitude of those early days 
to the present when we find even in the strongholds of the 
ultra-conservative university life of Germany, a recogni- 
tion of technical training which places it on a level with 
the other learned professions, or when at home we find 
even intellectually aristocratic Harvard inviting, perhaps 
vainly, a great technical school to share in its endowments 
and enjoy the lustre of its honored name. 

I have referred to some of these evidences of change and 
of progress in our views regarding higher education, be- 
cause I believe that we are even now in the midst of as im- 
portant changes and as great progress as in those years 
gone by. The tendency is to make education more practi- 
cal. We are coming more clearly to recognize that for 
the many kinds of men there must be many kinds of educa- 
tion. In those early days the engineers who grew up in 
a school of experience looked with doubt and disfavor for 
a time upon the man who, by some short cut of learning, 
was attempting to reach a goal ahead of those who were 
following the ordinary road. So the busines man to-day 
is inclined to look with doubt upon any suggestion that it 
is possible to have a higher commercial education which 
will be of practical value. Just as the educators of two 
generations ago felt that there was no proper place in the 
sacred grove of learning for a branch of education that 
smacks so of every-day life as did a course of engineering, 
so to-day there are many who believe that an attempt to 
teach the principles of commerce would be bringing into 
the classical conception of education, a subject that has 
no place there. 

The mental equipment of a business man needs to be 
greater to-day than was ever before necessary. Just as 
the sphere of a business man's actions has broadened with 
the advent of rapid transportation, telegraphs, cables and 
telephones, so have the needs of a broad understanding of 



M 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 

sound principles increased. It was steam processes of 
transportation and production that really made technical 
education necessary. The electric dynamo created the 
demand for technically educated electrical engineers. So 
the railroad, the fast steamship, the electric current in the 
telephone and cable and the great economic fact of gigan- 
tic and far-reaching business combinations, are making 
the science of business a different thing from any concep- 
tion of commerce which could have been had when Girard 
was the most successful of American business men. The 
enlarged scope of business is demanding better trained 
men — men who understand principles. New forces have 
made possible large scale production, and we need men 
who can comprehend the relation of that production to the 
world's markets. There has been introduced such com- 
plexity into modern business, and such a high degree of 
specialization, that the young man who begins without 
the foundation of an exceptional training, is in danger of 
remaining a mere clerk or bookkeeper. Commercial and 
industrial affairs are conducted on so large a scale that 
the neophyte has little chance to learn broadly either by 
observation or by experience. He is put at a single task. 
The more expert he becomes at it, the more likely it is that 
he will be kept at it unless he has had a training in his 
youth which has fitted him to comprehend in some 
measure the relation of his task to those which others 
are doing. 

It is true that the practical value of technical education 
is more obvious than is the value of a higher commercial 
education. A man cannot build a railroad bridge unless 
he is an engineer. Schools can teach engineering and the 
value of the technical school is therefore clear. It is less 
easy to establish the certain value of a higher commercial 
education, but, for my own part, I believe that that value 
will in time come to be as fully recognized. We have 



IS 



CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 

seen in Germany an example of distinct success of this 
sort of training-. One is beginning to find all over the 
world positions in business houses filled by Germans who 
have been selected because of the superior training 
they have received in the German schools. 

If the people of the United States are to make the 
most of their opportunities, they must employ the most 
effective methods. In a university course of higher 
commercial training much can be taught that will be of 
national value in the development of these opportunities. 
These schools of commerce, it seems to me, should be at- 
tached to universities. The training they offer should be 
in addition to the general university training. I believe 
there is a trend in educational development to-day that is 
in that direction, and that the results which will follow 
such a development will be of enormous value. 

The men who have administered Girard College have 
had occasion to note an interesting change in an important 
phase of industrial conditions. When Stephen Girard 
planned the institution there was well recognized as a part 
of our industrial life a system of industrial apprentice- 
ships. That system disappeared. The course of training 
which it offered no longer exists. Other and, perhaps, 
less efficient methods have come into vogue. 

There has been as marked change in the training which 
is available for the business man. It is by no means cer- 
tain that a young Stephen Girard, having in every par- 
ticular a mental equipment equal to that of the young 
Frenchman who put out to sea a century ago and more to 
make his fortune in commerce, could to-day duplicate that 
success. Conditions have vastly changed. A new order 
of equipment is demanded. The staunchness of character, 
the same intrepid will, to-day will play their part as they 
played it then, but in addition there is now demanded a 
breadth of technical knowledge, a fund of specialized in- 

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CO-ORDINATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 

formation, a comprehension of intricate relations and an 
understanding of broad principles which the conditions of 
a century or even a generation ago did not make im- 
perative. I have faith then that some new Girard, recog- 
nizing those changed conditions and consequent new de- 
mands, will make a benefaction which will help to give us 
clear-thinking, right-minded and well-equipped youths, 
from whom may be developed future captains of com- 
merce and industry. And if the example which this in- 
stitution typifies serves to lead that benefactor to give 
zvith his money the best there is in him of wisdom, ex- 
perience and judgment, to insure that the money be most 
wisely spent, then will there be fresh reason for us to 
honor the name of Stephen Girard. 



17 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



An address delivered at the 
Convocation of the University of the State of New York 
in the Senate Chamber at Albany- 
June 29, 1905. 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



In this gathering of professional educators I presume 
nothing less than the traditional bravery of the foolish 
would lead a layman into a discussion of a new phase of 
higher education. That would seem to be particularly true 
in the face of a recent utterance by that revered dean of 
American learning, President Eliot of Harvard, when the 
subject chosen is commercial education. President Eliot 
has recently told us that it is monstrous — the strong adjec- 
tive is his — that it is monstrous that the common schools 
should give much time to compound numbers and bank 
discount, and little time to drawing. In the face of that 
vigorous declaration against utilitarianism, the layman 
must be foolhardy indeed who would raise his voice in 
advocacy of an education especially adapted to men who 
are to lead commercial lives. 

President Eliot has told us further that the main object 
in every school should be — not to provide students with 
means of earning a livelihood — but to show them how to 
live happy and worthy lives inspired by ideals which exalt 
both labor and pleasure. That desirable object he seems 
to believe can be best obtained by teaching children how 
lines, straight and curved, lights and shades, form pic- 
tures ; rather than by leading their young minds into the 
waste places of compound numbers and bank discount. 

On any subject connected with education there is no 
opinion that should be more revered than that of the 
President of Harvard. His position is unique; his words 
are the voice of authority. This slighting opinion of bank 
discount and compound numbers which Dr. Eliot has ex- 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



pressed can, I presume, hardly be taken as representing 
his unquaHfied view regarding practical education. 
Through all time there have been many distinguished ut- 
terances by philosophers and teachers as to the meaning 
of education. These men, however, have rarely agreed 
in their concepts of the purpose and the aim of 
education. Since the days of the Greek philosophers there 
has been little progress toward a generally accepted view 
of what education should aim to accomplish. When the 
doctors of learning themselves disagree perhaps a layman 
may be forgiven for differing from them on some points. 
It is certain that the college curriculum has undergone 
many changes and much development even within the 
period of years during which most of you have been ac- 
tively connected with educational matters. We have seen 
great changes, marked broadening and much significant 
development in the studies generally prescribed as 
requisite for a college course. Those changes have been 
sufficiently marked to indicate that there is still, in the 
minds of those who are directing education, indefiniteness 
as to what is absolutely best in the way of instruction. 
The changes which have been going on have been suffi- 
ciently rapid and recent to lead one to believe that there 
may still be important changes, still material broadening, 
in the courses which our colleges offer. It is logical, 
therefore, to believe that our system of higher education 
has not settled into anything like permanent form. The 
alterations which we have seen indicate that there are 
more to come. Curriculums which are to-day regarded 
with the highest veneration, may to-morrow, in some, be 
found lacking and in need of modification. It is in the 
belief that the college curriculum is still in a period of 
transition and enlargement that I venture to give my 
views of one phase of higher education in which I think 
we are soon to see distinct developments. 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



The experience which I have had in business, and par- 
ticularly the experience which I have had with young 
college men in business affairs, leads me to the firm belief 
that much may properly be asked in the way of a broad- 
ened university curriculum. Much could be added that 
would be of great advantage to the individuals who are to 
be future leaders in business life. But the added courses 
would be of value, not alone to those individuals, but 
in the future development of commerce along right 
lines and thus of importance in working towards the 
well being of the commonwealth. 

I believe in the educated man in business. I believe the 
present college course is not the best that can be devised 
for the training of men who are to be leaders in com- 
mercial and financial life. It is true that we have scien- 
tifically classified a few of the principles and underlying 
laws of commerce and finance, and we teach them more 
or less well. I believe many more of those laws and 
principles can be scientifically classified, and can be taught, 
and that the result of such teaching will make better busi- 
ness men, will qualify men for great responsibility earlier 
in life, will help solve the problems that new commercial 
conditions have raised, and will work to our national ad- 
vantage, not only in the way of our pre-eminence in com- 
merce, but also in the direction of a clearer understand- 
ing of the true relation between government and business 
and therefore toward a better discharge of our duties as 
citizens. 

There should be no failure on the part of our educators 
to appreciate the increasing demands that ' are, by the 
changing character of commercial affairs, being laid upon 
the abilities of business men. The last two decades have 
witnessed changes that make necessary an entirely new 
order of ability in business life. Those changes demand 
a greatly superior training. We have seen the capital 



23 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



employed in business enterprises jump from millions to 
billions. That change is significant of something much 
more than mere growth in the magnitude of commercial 
operations. It is significant of fundamental alteration, in 
conditions and methods. We have seen struggling lines 
of railways united into systems and systems into vast 
nets, all operated under a single management. We have 
seen whole industries concentrated into a few combina- 
tions, and those combinations dominating their especial 
markets throughout the world. These new conditions 
have surrounded us with problems for the solution of 
which experience furnishes neither rule nor precedent. 
To solve them we need a grounding in principles, an 
understanding of broad underlying laws. 

The world is in great measure becoming a commercial 
unit. The eye of every business man must be farseeing 
enough to observe all markets and survey all zones. A 
significant word spoken in any market place or parliament 
of the world, instantly reaches the modern business man, 
and he should be prepared correctly to interpret its mean- 
ing. 

Electricity has annihilated the geographies, for it has 
destroyed the distinctions which gave geographical boun- 
daries their significance. Political distinctions will con- 
tinue to live, languages and religions will continue to 
differ, but the peoples of the earth, regardless of political 
boundaries, of racial differences, of national ambitions, 
are coming rapidly to form one great commercial unit, one 
great economic organism. There are no tariff walls 
against capital. The language talked by money is a uni- 
versal tongue. The modern business leader, therefore, 
more than was ever the case before, needs a mind educated 
to think clearly, needs the ability accurately to trace effect 
to cause, and needs the training: that will enable him to 



24 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



understand the true relation between far separated con- 
ditions and widely diverse influences. 

With the limitless wealth of resources which we have 
had in America, the successful conduct of a business 
enterprise has been a comparatively easy matter. Nothing 
short of egregious error has been likely to lead to failure. 
Any ordinary mistake in judging conditions or in the 
application of principles has, as a rule, been obliterated by 
the rapidity of the country's growth and the extent of its 
industrial and commercial development. If some of the 
men who have made notable commercial successes had 
been forced to face the harder conditions that exist in the 
old world, the measure of their success might have been 
very different. Had they been confronted by a situ- 
ation where population was pressing upon the means of 
subsistence, where all the soil was under cultivation, 
where the mineral resources were meager and where there 
was lacking the wealth of the virgin forests, they would 
have needed greater abilities and better trained faculties 
in order to achieve such marked success. We are easily 
inclined to believe that we have the best business men in 
the world. I am disposed to agree with that view. But 
one should not lose sight of the fact that the lavishness of 
opportunity has brought commercial success to many who 
have come into the field illy prepared and with small 
ability. Any one who is familiar with the commercial life 
of Germany and has seen the successes there built up out 
of a poverty of resources — successes perhaps not compar- 
ing brilliantly with some of our own, until one studies the 
difficulties that had to be surmounted in achieving them, — 
must perceive there some elements of business ability 
superior to our own. There has been an astonishing in- 
crease of wealth and an enormous expansion in com- 
merce in that nation. No one searching for the 
fundamental reasons why German commercial prog- 

25 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



ress is relatively so much greater than that of other 
European nations, will fail to reach the conclusion 
that one of the greatest factors in that country's de- 
velopment has been the prompt and intelligent use which 
has been made of the schools. The Germans have to the 
highest degree made practical application of their learn- 
ing. They have brought the true scientific spirit to bear 
upon their every-day problems. Industry and commerce 
have both profited in the largest degree. To-day we find 
in that nation, in spite of its lack of natural resources, pre- 
eminence in many industrial fields, a striking pre-emi- 
nence in foreign commerce, and a superior intelligence 
in the administration of finance. Those successes can 
all be, in the greatest measure, traced back to the school- 
master. 

A certain unequaled native ability, coupled with un- 
paralleled natural resources have united to help American 
business men achieve a measure of material success that 
has been in many cases, I believe, quite out of proportion 
to the ability brought to the work. In American business 
life the coming years can hardly be expected to offer so 
many easy roads toward business success as have ap- 
peared to the commercial wayfarer at every turn in years 
past. Our resources, of course, are far from reaching the 
complete development common in the old world countries. 
We have nevertheless advanced to a point of development 
where there will be less chance for success to come as a 
reward for haphazard and illy directed work. The suc- 
cesses of the future will be for better trained men. That 
is true not alone because we have in a measure already 
exploited our great resources, but because the field of 
commercial activity has so vastly broadened, because there 
has been such an enormous gain in the magnitude of com- 
mercial operations, and because of the increasingly intri- 
cate relationships which have resulted from this broaden- 

26 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



ing and this growth. The changed scope, character and 
methods of modern business have united to demand men 
with a training superior to anything that was ever needed 
before, as the successful commercial leaders of the future. 
That general training cannot be had in the highly special- 
ized process of the routine work of the office. The prac- 
tical school of experience is too wasteful as a teacher of 
general principles. There will, of course, be the excep- 
tional man who will come up through that routine train- 
ing and dominate his field by the force of his intellect, but 
in the main the new conditions of affairs demand a su- 
perior training such as only the schools can give. 

I know the majority of business men trained in the 
school of routine work will doubt the feasibility of teach- 
ing in the class-room, in a scientific and orderly fashion, 
those principles which they have gained only through 
years of hard experience and which they even yet recog- 
nize more by a sort of intuition than by conscious analysis. 
The engineers of an earlier day thought that blue overalls 
and not a doctor's gown formed the proper dress for the 
neophyte in engineering, but we have come long ago to 
recognize that the road to success as an engineer is 
through a technical school. So, too, I believe, we will 
in time come to recognize, though perhaps not to so full 
an extent, that the road to commercial leadership will be 
through the doors of those colleges and universities which 
have developed courses especially adapted to the require- 
ments of commercial life. 

When I speak of a higher commercial education I am 
referring to an ideal education for commercial and finan- 
cial leaders. An ordinary machinist does not require to be 
graduated a mechanical engineer. A riveter of bridge 
belts has no need to have taken honors in a course of civil 
engineering. A bookkeeper, a stenographer or a bank 
clerk does not require such a commercial education as I 



27 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



am suggesting. For all those positions there should be 
special instruction, fitted to the character of the duties. 
My thought at the moment, however, is directed particu- 
larly towards the ideal form of university education for 
leaders in financial and commercial life. 

In advocating a so-called higher commercial education, 
I would not be regarded as desiring a college course highly 
specialized and devoted to technical subjects at the expense 
of a broad cultural training. I would not be understood 
as advocating changes that will work towards a narrower 
college education, but rather changes that will work to- 
ward a broader one. I am not going to outline specifically 
what I think the curriculum should be for an ideal higher 
commercial education. At the present time such a definite 
outline is impossible. It is impossible because text-books 
must be written and teachers must be taught before that 
ideal course can be given. An ideal course such as I have 
in mind must at best be the development of years. There 
will be necessary action and reaction between university 
life and business life. Men must be better trained in the 
university for their business careers, and then out of that 
business life, and from among those better trained men, 
must in turn come men who will bring to the universities 
that combination of theory and practice, that knowledge 
of principles combined with familiarity with practical 
detail, which in the end will make both ideal teachers and 
ideal business men. 

There is little or nothing that has been proven good 
that will need to be cut from the present college course. 
I believe the additional work and training that will be 
necessary in an ideal commercial education can easily be 
made possible within the present term of university resi- 
dence by more effective and economical use of time. It 
will not be necessary to discard present requirements that 
have been found to be useful and have been proven pro- 

28 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



ductive of good results. It will only be necessary to 
apply to both the years of preparatory work, and to the 
years of the college course, the business man's keen 
antipathy to waste. The time can then be saved that will 
be needed for the mastery of those special lines of study 
that will differentiate this ideal commercial course from 
the work which is at present demanded for a college 
degree. 

I believe it is too nearly the truth that a college degree 
in America to-day does not mean a great deal more than 
four years of residence at a college. It certainly does not 
mean that there have been four full honest years of hard 
and conscientious work as an absolute requisite for that 
degree. There is undoubtedly opportunity for a man to 
put in the fullest measure of industry, but there are few 
institutions where that full measure is absolutely required 
before they will give the stamp of their approval in the 
form of a degree. The schools that are most tenacious of 
classical tradition should hardly feel proud of the fact 
that practically the only institutions of learning in the 
country that absolutely demand a full and honest return 
of work done in exchange for the honor of their degrees, 
are the technical schools. If as sharp a demand for time 
well spent were made in all colleges, a long step would be 
taken toward gaining sufficient room in the curriculum for 
the studies that will be necessary to make up an ideal 
commercial course. 

I am perfectly aware that among the various concep- 
tions of the true aim of education, there are many which 
agree with that of Dr. Eliot that a school is not for the 
purpose of providing the student with a means of earning 
a livelihood. I sympathize with those conceptions which 
hold that the purpose of education is to create noble 
ideals, to encourage the growth of the tap roots of sound 
character and to cultivate the blossoms of culture, but do 



29 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



not believe that my ideal of a commercial education is 
necessarily at variance with these ideals. In advocating 
it I do not think it is necessary to adopt the view of the 
utilitarians, who believe that education should be merely 
a course of technical training, fitting the student for 
some practical work. I would not make the mistake of 
planning a course of study which would merely be an 
anticipation of the duties of the counting room. I know 
there are some who measure the value of the work of a college 
by its success in being of practical and important advan- 
tage to those who are preparing for professional life. 
They believe that the school which will, in the briefest 
time, turn a man into an able lawyer, a competent engi- 
neer, or a skillful physician, should be regarded as the 
most successful. People holding that very practical con- 
ception of the purpose of education should at least be 
glad to welcome a new field in which university training 
may be applied with practical results, but I do not believe 
it necessary to hold these narrow views in order to agree 
that higher education may be so shaped as to be of 
especial advantage to young men looking forward to 
business careers. 

There are some who regard the university as primarily 
a center for the diffusion of learning. That conception is 
imperfect, but I should think that those who hold it would 
recognize a field of the very greatest importance in the 
work which might be done in the way of disseminating 
correct views in regard to financial and commercial sub- 
jects. If we had in our universities professors capable of 
a thoroughly scientific understanding of the principles 
underlying many of the problems of finance and com- 
merce, these men would help us to see distinctly and to 
think clearly in regard to some of our everyday practices 
and tendencies. The dissemination of such knowledge 
would surely be of great value. 



30 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



There are some whose conception of a university is 
that its greatest work should be in the field of scientific 
research. They have a noble ideal. They believe that the 
development of new knowledge is a work even superior 
to that of its diffusion. They aim to inculcate a spirit 
which will lead men to seek truth for its own sake, and 
to create an enthusiasm for scientific exactness. That 
idea is not at all out of harmony with the possibilities of 
a higher commercial education. 

In the popular mind the motives of business men are 
often maligned. I know leaders in the business world 
who have as little concern for personal reward in what 
they seek to accomplish as would be the rule with men 
engaged in scientific research. These men are devoted to 
certain commercial ideals. The making of money hap- 
pens to be inseparably connected with those ideals, but 
the making of money is not the great moving force. They 
are interested in the expansion and development of busi- 
ness, in the discovery of new fields of operation and in the 
introduction of improved methods. Their interest in that 
work is no more ignoble than is the interest of any other 
specialist. Men who already have more than most ample 
means, are not for personal gain pursuing business with 
an absorbing intensity. It is empire building with them, 
perhaps on a small scale or perhaps on a great one. Their 
lives are not sordid. They may be narrow, as the lives of 
all specialists are narrow, but the popular idea in regard 
to men whose lives are given to commerce, the view that 
these men are devoting their existence to mere money 
getting, is in great measure erroneous. They have the 
same high type of imagination which usually marks men 
who attain eminence in any other line of activity. They 
are, in a large way or in a small way, as may be deter- 
mined by their environments, using qualities similar to 
those that make great statesmen, great scholars, or great 



31 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



scientists. I believe, therefore, that a proper education 
for the highest work in commercial life might be so out- 
lined as to be entirely in harmony in its practical applica- 
tion with the ideals of those who conceive that a univer- 
sity should be a place for scientific research, a place where 
the scientific habit of mind should be created, and where 
truth should be sought purely for the love of the truth. 

A higher conception, perhaps, than all those others, is 
a definition which Dr. Hadley gives us. In his view the 
most profoundly important work which falls to the lot of 
the American citizen, is his duty in guiding the des- 
tinies of the country. He believes that if we train the 
members of the rising generation to do this well, all other 
things can be trusted to take care of themselves ; but if 
we do not train them to do this well, no amount of educa- 
tion in other lines will make up for the deficiency. Sup- 
pose then we accept that as the final test of a university 
training. How can the duties of citizenship best be 
taught? What are the requisites for a training in citizen- 
ship ? I would answer, training in the highest concep- 
tions of business. Of what does the work of guiding 
the destinies of the country consist? Consider what are 
the political problems of the day and of the generation. 
A great part, nearly the whole of the work of government 
in a country like ours, is merely the conduct of business 
on a very large scale. Look over the political platforms 
of the last generation or study the messages of the presi- 
dents, and you will find a very large percentage of the 
political questions that have been raised, are, in their 
ultimate definition, merely commercial questions. What 
have they been? The money standard ; the control of 
trusts ; the regulation of interstate commerce; railroad 
rebates ; questions affecting the currency and banking ; 
customs duties ; schemes of taxation ; the building of 
canals and the creation of plans for irrigation. These and 



32 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



questions like them have made up almost altogether the 
political questions of the day. They are in the end merely 
business questions. No purely ethical principle is at stake. 
We have now no necessity for a discussion of the rights 
of man. Our government in the main is a great business 
enterprise and our political problems in the main are 
economic problems. 

In respect to such questions, what sort of training is 
wanted? Can any one answer them so well as a thor- 
oughly trained business man, granting first that he is 
governed by the highest ideals of patriotism and honesty ? 
Will not the man who is thoroughly well grounded in the 
principles of commerce and finance, be better qualified to 
guide the destinies of our country, than one who has 
merely had a training in the love for the beautiful or one 
who has won class prizes in Greek declamation ? If we 
adopt President Hadley's view as to the most profoundly 
important work of the university, I believe that noble 
ideal is most distinctly in harmony with the conception I 
have of what is possible in the way of a higher commer- 
cial education. 

In this connection Dr. Hadley has made one of the 
wisest statements that has come from any modern edu- 
cator. He has told us that every change in industry and 
political methods makes it clearer that mere intelligence 
is not sufficient to secure wise administration of the af- 
fairs of the country, but in addition there must also be 
developed a sense of trusteeship. There is nothing so 
much needed in American life to-day, in my opinion, as 
a cultivation of a sense of trusteeship. That need is by 
no means confined to political life but is the need stand- 
ing above all others in commercial life. If the schools 
can teach it, and in a measure I believe they can, they will 
do more for commerce than they have done for engineer- 
ing, or law, or science. If I were to name one thing pre- 



33 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



eminently to be desired as a result of a course of higher 
commercial education, it would be the cultivation of a 
proper sense of trusteeship. I do not regard that as an 
impossible ideal. A truer understanding of the real rela- 
tion and relative importance of the principles of commerce 
would give men a far clearer view and juster apprecia- 
tion of the responsibilities of trusteeship. We have men 
holding positions of great trust in our commercial life 
to-day who have a childish ignorance in regard to their 
responsibilities as trustees. These men are honest men, 
they are well-meaning men, but they have never learned 
the elemental principles upon which a sense of trusteeship 
must be built. I am not so optimistic as to believe that a 
college course could be so designed that those having its 
benefits would afterward in active life always be imbued 
with the highest sense of trusteeship, but I do believe that 
Dr. Hadley uttered a great truth when he pointed out 
that the cultivation of such a sense is the most important 
work that a college has to do. If it is important in the 
education of the American citizen, it is doubly important 
in the education of that class of American citizens, who 
have to deal with the commercial and financial life of the 
country. 

We are having an illustration to-day of how a clearer 
understanding of underlying principles of commerce il- 
luminates ethical considerations. A generation ago, be- 
fore we had thought very deeply or accurately in regard 
to the nature of common carriers, there were many men 
who saw nothing ethically wrong in a railroad rebate. 
Men regarded a railroad as a piece of private property 
and railroad transportation as a commodity which might 
with perfect propriety be bargained for and sold to the 
best advantage. The whole community has since been 
educated to a clearer comprehension of the fundamental 
principles of transportation, with the result that we have 



34 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



built up ethical standards which absolutely did not exist 
before. This I believe is an illustration of what might 
happen in many other directions with a better education 
embracing principles and underlying laws. 

I want to quote again from the President of Yale. Dr. 
Hadley says: "An intelligent study of science whether it 
be physics or biology, psychology or history, should train 
a man in that respect for law which is the best antidote to 
capricious selfwill on the part of the individual. The 
student learns that he is in the midst of an ordered world. 
If he has the root of the matter in him, he thereby gains 
increasing respect for that order and readiness to become 
himself a part of it." 

That statement we must all recognize as eminently 
true. Is it not equally true of the study of the science of 
commerce? Will not such a study train men in that 
respect for law which is the best antidote to capricious 
selfwill on the part of the individual? Is it not that of 
which the country is to-day standing in the greatest need ? 
What do we need more than an antidote to capricious 
selfwill on the part of the accidental millionaire? Does 
not a lack of knowledge of fundamental principles lead to 
a lack of respect for the great fundamental laws of 
finance? I believe that is true. I believe when we have 
reached a point of really making a scientific classification 
of the principles of finance and commerce, a classification 
which without question can be made, and when we have 
developed a class of teachers capable of giving adequate 
instruction and so made possible a course of study truly 
worthy of serving as the basis for a new college degree, 
we will then have taken a long step in the direction of 
creating that respect for law of which we are now in 
need. There will be a respect for economic laws because 
we will better understand their significance and force. 
There will be a greater respect for legislative laws be- 

35 



A NEW COLLEGE DEGREE 



cause, with wiser legislators, those laws will more surely 
be based on correct economic principles. If all this is 
true, then whatever your ideals of education may be, 
cannot you all unite in helping to evolve a college course 
which will be worthy of upholding a degree of Master 
of Commerce ? 



36 



THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE 
OF TRADE SCHOOLS 



An address delivered before the 

National Educational Association at Asbury Park 

July 6, 1905. 



THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF 
TRADE SCHOOLS 



In the group of the great industrial nations, there has 
come forward in recent years one that has taken a place 
in the very front rank among industrial competitors. It 
has reached a pre-eminent position in many special fields 
of industry, wresting from others the vantage they had 
long held in serene security. That nation is Germany. 
By the aid of rapidly developed skill and constantly im- 
proved methods, Germany has closed its own markets to 
the products of the manufactories of other countries. But 
Germany has done more than that; it has developed an 
ability to successfully compete in the neutral markets of 
the world, until to-day it shows the greatest capacity in 
this field of international industrial competition that is 
displayed by any of the great nations. 

In accomplishing this remarkable industrial success, 
Germany has had little aid from nature to make the task 
an easy one. There has been no wealth of raw material 
such as we Americans have had to aid us. There has been 
no vast homogeneous domestic market such as has been of 
vital importance in building up our manufactories. Her 
people have lacked the peculiar inventive ingenuity which 
in many fields of industry has been the sole basis for our 
achievements. Her artisans have possessed almost none 
of the delicate artistic sense which makes French handi- 
work superior to the obstructions of all tariff walls. Her 
industries were forced to grapple with English compet- 
itors entrenched behind a control and domination of the 
international markets which for generations have been 
successfully maintained. But amidst this poverty of nat- 



39 



THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF TRADE SCHOOLS 

ural resources, and from among a people not signally 
gifted either with inventive ability or artistic tempera- 
ment, there has in a generation emerged an industrial 
nation which stands forth, if we take into account the 
disadvantages against which it had to struggle, as a 
marvel of economic development. 

I have had a somewhat unusual opportunity to study 
the underlying causes of the economic success of 
Germany, and I am firmly convinced that the explanation 
of that progress can be encompassed in a single word — 
the schoolmaster. He is the great corner-stone of Ger- 
many's remarkable commercial and industrial success. 
From the economic point of view, the school system of 
Germany stands unparalleled. The fundamental prin- 
ciple of the German educational system is, in large meas- 
ure, to train youths to be efficient economic units. In that 
respect the German system is markedly at variance with 
the present development of our own educational system. 
In the German schools the most important aid in the work 
of successfully training youths into efficient industrial 
units has come from an auxiliary to the regular school 
system. It has come from that division of instruction 
known as the trade schools. The German trade schools 
have been so designed that they supplement the cultural 
training of the common school system. They are devised 
to give instruction which will be practically valuable in 
every trade, in every commercial and industrial calling. 
They are so arranged that their work supplements both 
the cultural training of the academic system and the 
technical routine of the daily task. These schools are the 
direct auxiliaries of the shops and the offices. They have 
been the most powerful influence in Germany in training 
to high efficiency the rank and file of the industrial army. 

The students in these trade schools, you understand, 
are youths who have completed the regular compulsory 



40 



THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF TRADE SCHOOLS 

educational course and have gone out into the ranks of 
active industrial and commercial workers. The hours of 
instruction are so arranged that they fall outside of the 
regular hours of labor in shop or office. The curriculum 
is broadly practical. It includes the science of each par- 
ticular trade — its mathematics or chemistry for instance — 
and its technology. But it does not stop there. Prin- 
ciples of wise business management are taught. The aim 
is to prepare a student for the practical conduct of a busi- 
ness. He gains knowledge of production and consump- 
tion, of markets and of the causes of price fluctuations. 
He is put into a position to acquire an insight into con- 
crete business relations, and into trade practices and con- 
ditions. Are not those aims worthy of our schools? 
What truer democracy can there be than to have a school 
system that will point the way to every worker, no matter 
how humble, by which he may reach a clearer comprehen- 
sion of the industry in which he is engaged and with the 
aid of this knowledge may rise to a position of impor- 
tance in that industry. 

To do all this does not mean the "commercializing" of 
our educational system. There is no need for opposition 
even from those who hold that it is not the place of the 
schools to teach youths how to earn a livelihood. Those 
educators who lay strongest emphasis upon such phrases 
as "character formation," "mental discipline" and "har- 
monious cultivation of the faculties," may continue to 
hold firmly to those views and at the same time welcome 
an auxiliary school system which, without curtailing 
their ideal culture courses, will add, after the ordinary 
period of school life is over, the opportunity for valuable 
practical instruction. 

Such an auxiliary system of trade schools will be avail- 
able for the youth after he has left the direct influence of 
our present school system. There are in the United 



41 



THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF TRADE SCHOOLS 

States, ten millions of population between the ages of 15 
and 20 years. Three-quarters of that number are not in 
attendance at any school. Here is a group of youth, 
seven and one-half millions in number, from which the 
students of such trade schools would be drawn. 

Surely it needs little training in the economics of in- 
dustry to comprehend what an unreckonable advantage 
it would be if a substantial proportion of that seven and 
one-half millions were to be brought within the influence 
of a new and entirely practical system of education de- 
signed to make each youth a more efficient economic unit. 

The present generation of American youth, entering 
industrial or commercial life, is to encounter a new and in 
some respects a harder condition of affairs. So far as 
you, as educators, conceive education to be in any sense a 
preparation for practical life in a work-a-day world, there 
have been laid upon you new demands and fresh re- 
sponsibilities. The industrial life of this country has in a 
decade undergone changes more significant than had been 
encompassed before in a period of two generations. No 
one whose life has been largely in the class-room is likely 
to have comprehended fully the true significance of the 
development of the forces of combination. There has 
been combination in the field of labor as evidenced in 
the growing power of unionism ; combination in the 
domain of capital as manifested in the trusts ; concen- 
tration in the control of industries, in the subdivision of 
labor and the aggregation of wealth. This display of 
the forces of combination, equally significant in the 
fields of labor and of capital, has brought changed 
conditions to the problem of human industrial endeavor. 
The welfare of the people and the position which our 
country is to maintain among nations, both depend on 
no single thing more than on the recognition of these 
changed conditions by our educators. You must 



42 



THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF TRADE SCHOOLS 

recognize the new demands of the times. You must pro- 
vide the educational requisites which these changed con- 
ditions make imperative. 

The forces of combination — the labor union and the 
trusts — are united and are working in harmony to ac- 
complish at least one thing. They are united in a tend- 
ency to make, of a great percentage of our population, 
commercial or industrial automatons. They both tend to 
subdivide labor, and thereby limit the opportunity to 
acquire a comprehension of broad principles. They both 
tend to circumscribe the field of the apprentice, narrow- 
ing his opportunity, forcing him into petty specialization 
and restricting his free and intelligent development. All 
this is placing us in grave danger of evolving an in- 
dustrial race of automatic workers, without diversity of 
skill, without an understanding of principles, and with- 
out a breadth of capacity. There is but one power that 
can counteract that tendency — that power is the school- 
master. These youths who can gain from their daily work 
only that narrow routine technical experience, which 
in the main is all that the conditions of modern industry 
offer, have a right to demand something more. They 
have a right to demand the opportunity for a practical 
education. As modern conditions narrow their technical 
training, those same conditions broaden the opportunity 
for the man who does acquire knowledge which will give 
him a grasp of more than a single detail of his business. 
I believe it is your duty to provide schools which will 
supplement the routine of the day's work, schools that 
will give to these youths a comprehension of the relation 
of the narrow daily task to the broad industry, schools 
that will supplement such cultural training as our present 
system has provided with practical knowledge of imme- 
diate and valuable application, schools that will counter- 
act the discouragement and monotony of the daily round 



43 



THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF TRADE SCHOOLS 

of toil and create in their stead some enthusiasm for work, 
build up a love of labor by showing an intellectual side 
to what before was blank mechanical routine. 

The industrial and commercial world never needed the 
schoolmaster more. It is not enough to say that you will 
give your efforts toward the perfecting of the present 
system, until it will so garb youth in an armor of sweet- 
ness and light, until it will so instill into the youthful 
mind a love of the beautiful, so strengthen his character, 
so build up by general cultural instruction his mental 
grasp, so train his general faculties that you will for him 
have dignified all labor and provided him with springs 
from which, without regard to material surroundings, he 
can always drink with the deepest satisfaction. All that 
is a noble ideal, but none know so well as you yourselves, 
that an armor of that sort, if it is to be forged by a boy 
before he is fifteen years of age, will be an imperfect pro- 
tection against the difficulties of modern industrialism. 
The present system of education does not meet the pres- 
ent requirements of industrial conditions. There is a 
want in that industrial situation which nothing can so 
well supply as an auxiliary school system. I believe 
Germany has recognized that more clearly than any other 
nation. Germany's answer to the problem raised by 
the new industrialism has been the development of the 
trade school. Her reward has been an unprecedented 
prosperity of her people and an unexampled develop- 
ment of her economic resources. 

I would particularly emphasize the difference between 
a system of trade schools and a movement to enlarge the 
present curriculum of existing schools by the introduc- 
tion of manual training. There should be no confusion 
between those two ideas. One belongs to the category of 
the "fads and frills." I believe it is useful, but perhaps 
it crowds out other things still more useful. The trade 



44 



THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF TRADE SCHOOLS 

school system which we need is an utterly different and 
far more serious matter. It is a technical school of com- 
paratively advanced type, with the technical side of its 
instruction in the hands of skilled practical workmen. 
The students are serious workers, regularly employed in 
shops and offices, who are seeking for knowledge that 
will help them better to grasp the technique and the prin- 
ciples of their daily labor. The curriculum is designed 
to aid them to comprehend the scientific and theoretical 
sides of their work, supplementing their technical ex- 
perience. The field is quite outside the direct influence 
of our present school system. The result, in my opinion, 
if such a system is generally developed, can not be reck- 
oned in symbols of dollars. It will be as far-reaching as 
our international relations, as broad as our industrial life, 
as important as the welfare, prosperity and contentment 
of our people. 



45 



LIBRfiRY OF CONGRESS 



019 601 136 5 



